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DEFINITIONAL TRAP. “DNA is non-living because it cannot maintain homeostasis on its own. And it does not have a metabolism of its own.” https://lnkd.in/dMinrW7 View in LinkedIn

LOTS OF STORAGE. “The researchers totted up the number of organisms in the world, from the tiniest virus to the biggest whale, multiplied this by the total number of their cells containing at least once DNA molecule and converted this figure into an estimated weight – about 50bn tonnes of genetic material.” https://lnkd.in/dKU5Dr8 View in LinkedIn

SO ENDS this provocative and thoughtful discussion about where life starts and ends, and the problems of defining life. When the Little Green Men come to Earth and ask us what we define as life, collectively, we will score a D(-) as a backward student in the Cosmos. View in LinkedIn

DEFINITIONAL ISSUES. “Thinking about viruses and their relegation to the realms of non-living and non-organismal entities necessitates a consideration of whether organism and living entity are identical categories, and whether a minimal account of life has to begin with cells.” https://lnkd.in/dVyX2pV View in LinkedIn

THE CASE OF VIRUSES. “Viruses are the biological objects that are the pivot of our discussion because many biologists deny that they are living organisms. In fact, they are frequently considered to be test cases for the boundary between life and non-life, organism and non-organism, and biology and chemistry.” https://lnkd.in/dVyX2pV View in LinkedIn

THE CORE. “The collaborative nature of living entities and processes is our essential starting point. Darwin’s theory of natural selection has, quite appropriately, focused a great deal of theoretical interest on questions of competition.” https://lnkd.in/dVyX2pV View in LinkedIn

NEW LIFE FORMS. “Our view of life as a continuum of variably structured collaborative systems leaves open the possibility that a variety of forms of organized matter – from chemical systems to ecosystems – might be usefully understood as living entities.” https://lnkd.in/dVyX2pV View in LinkedIn

PARENT WAS A COMPUTER. “So it's the first living self-replicating cell that we have on the planet whose DNA was made chemically and designed in the computer. So it has no genetic ancestors. Its parent is a computer.” https://lnkd.in/dfMtfwG View in LinkedIn

PHASE ONE. “This is the first synthetic cell that's been made," said Venter. "We call it synthetic because the cell is totally derived from a synthetic chromosome, made with four bottles of chemicals on a chemical synthesizer, starting with information in a computer." http://news.discovery.com/tech/biotechnology/synthetic-genome-life.htm View in LinkedIn

SYNTHETIC LIFE. “Scientists report the first successful implantation of fully synthetic genome. The manmade genome was more than one million base pairs long.” http://news.discovery.com/tech/biotechnology/synthetic-genome-life.htm View in LinkedIn